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Trend Spotting – New tool for new reports
Back in June we took a stand at the Ideal Business Show Wales. One of the ways that we attracted delegates to us was to offer them a free 10 minute review of their websites (see screen shot).
Now we could have just produced a paper questionnaire and completed a form with a pen, but being a digital communications agency we decided to develop an online tool, which hooked up to a back-end database so that we could analyse the results as a whole after the event. And in fact we were able to get an overview of business websites in Wales and spot some common trends and themes (see Neil’s previous post).
You may be thinking that developing this tool was overkill for a couple of days at an exhibition, but there was method in our madness since we have plans for the prototype we developed.
After spending some time recently, extending and refining the review criteria, and tuning the database we are now in a position to begin to use the tool to produce trend-spotting reports into the websites of any given sector.
This is not a new venture for us, since we, or more specifically I, have been producing sector benchmarking reports on websites for many years. (see the reports section of our site).
However, this does represent an evolution of the report format. Previously the objective of the reports was to identify and highlight best practice, in relation to the basics of good website design, but the web has moved on and in our opinion everyone should be getting the basics right by now. What makes a really good site stand out is its ability to encourage brand awareness, communicate its proposition, and meet the organisation’s business objectives. So with this in mind we have defined criteria which will enable us to measure how able sites in any given sector are at meeting these needs as well as spot trends, and comment on the effectiveness of those trends.
We believe that our new reports will be unique since they will be a departure from the ubiquitous “Your site scored 8 out of 10 for accessibility” format and will provide a real appreciation of what works and what doesn’t for any given sector’s web presence. The data that our new tool will help us to collect will enable us to provide our clients and the broader industry with truly insightful commentary which we believe will demonstrate Precedent’s leading thinking.
Our first report on traditional universities is due for release at the beginning of October. It will be quickly followed by similar reports into Modern universities and HE establishments in the UK along with an appreciation of any variations in their online channels of communication.
